According to the Guardian Unlimited, FHM recently commissioned a magazine survey that revealed that men are increasingly yearning for more work-life balance. Before I go any further, let me vent my irritation on that phrase “work-life balance”.
Work-life balance, in the context it is used in general parlance, is referring to balance only for parents with children.
Not for those of us who are childfree, whether by choice or by happenstance. Childfree people need not apply, unless they want the questions like, “but you don’t have a family, do you? I mean, you don’t have kids.” That’s when I wish I could do an “Ally McBeal” scene where the head that produced the idiot comment swells up and explodes… but I digress.
Men apparently want a 50/50 deal with their partners, sharing the childcare and the housework. The problem is, just when the men have got to feeling this way (and isn’t this what women really want?) the ground’s shifted. The men feel that the women have changed their minds and now want out of the rat race and back into the old roles.
This isn’t the first time I’ve read of women wanting a return to staying at home, doing the housework and the childcare.
And here’s a very interesting point from the Guardian article, one I’ve always believed, from my childfree vantage point, has been the case.
“Half of men with a baby or young children say their partner “now wants him to earn enough so she can be a full-time mother”, while 38% say their partner wants them to earn enough to allow her to work part-time.
Now, how is that going to enable men to be home and share the housework and childcare? There is still the pressure to bring home the salary, and it has to be a big enough salary to be able to support a certain lifestyle.
Parents don’t realise when they go on about the costs of raising kids. Or maybe it’s just that they like to remind themselves. Today it’s the astronomical cost of childcare. Tomorrow it will be something else. Kid are clearly a cost centre. Yet when I mention to people we thought hard about the financial and economic aspect of having kids before we decided not to, people are either aghast or dismissive or both, usually saying something like “oh, well you’d never have them if you thought of the cost would you?…” Errrm… precisely. Having kids would have meant that:
i) our standard of living would probably drop
ii) we would have had to rely on a single salary for quite some time
iii) I (being the higher earner) would have to go back to work as soon as I could and start juggling.
My observations indicate that women, for all they want men to share the household chores still expect men to earn enough so that they (women) can stay home with the kids, AND they want them to take on more of the childcare. Quite how the men are to do that isn’t clear.
Of course, if both partners are working, then neither of them really gets to spend the time they’d like to with the children.
Then we are back to the contentious argument of “why have kids if you don’t want to be with them?”
People do want to be with their children (most of the time anyway), the cold fact fact of life though is that time with kids has to be financed, like any other area of life, except it’s more expensive. And the financing part comes at a price – long hours to get the promotions that pay enough to have a somewhere decent standard of living. And never seeing your kids.
Not for the first time am I glad my husband and I are childfree. While for the most part work is sympathetic to people with children, not for anything would I want to do that daily juggling act. If we’d had even one child we would have had to because neither of us could afford not to work.
Will men get more family time? Even with all the work-life balance, men are less likely to drop out of the workplace if they are in, or aspire to a high earning career. Or a career, period. I think they’ll need to be working even harder – unless they quit completely to be full-time home-dads. Opting out of the workplace right now is lethal to any career – including women.
Career fulfillment and a happy (childed) family life still seem to be mutually exclusive for the most part.
Not so for childfree families. Happily.
Technorati Tags: childfree, women, Career
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
i see a relationship as a partnership, if i earned enough, and rowan wanted to stay at home and cook and clean, that would be fine, but since i was the breadwinner, i would expect her to do the house stuff.
if she was the main breadwinner, i am sure she would expect me to do the housework. being a man, and being for equality for everyone, i get flamed, because i dare say the truth as seen from a mans standpoint.
in a lot of boards, there is a anti male bias, in this first paragraph, on other boards they would call me a sexist, without reading the second paragraph.
but there is a hell of a lot of pro family (read pro mother) bias in the workplace and in the home place. theres many stories about stay at home mothers, not doing a lick of work. then expecting the man to look after the children when he comes in from his job.
Men will never be treated fairly unless women say “thats wrong”, unfortunatly a lot of these pro mother people cannot see anything wrong with using a man just for what they can get out of him. Thats the saddest part of the whole thing.
Well spoken. I doubt men will have more family time. Sort of a catch 22 you see, enable to have money to spend more time with your child you have to work more hours to receive raise or bonus, which really means LESS time with kids.
Beloved and I hate being referred to as “just a couple”. It’s even more galling to hear singles with kids who have been in and out of relationships with multiple partners refer to themselves as “family” and then refer to us as “ just a couple”. But I diverge so now to the topic at hand.
The long and the short of it is that we are all working harder and getting poorer. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study which demonstrates the income gap in Canada is growing at a faster rate than ever before and a majority of families are falling far behind the top earners.
The report clarifies what we have long suspected: the rewards of Canada’s booming economy have been going disproportionately to a select few. Most families 80% are getting a smaller share of Canada’s growing economy than their counterparts did in the late 1970’s.
The reason Canada’s income gap between the rich and poor is growing, largely because the lion’s share of Canada’s economic growth is going to the richest 10% of families and not to the majority, the 80% of families earning under a $100,000 per annum.
I wrote a blog post on this here http://timethief.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/canadian-families-working-harder-and-growing-poorer/
And the situation in the United States is just as bad if not worse. And I wrote a blog post on that too http://timethief.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/us-has-record-numbers-in-severe-poverty-while-military-budgets-soar/
It’s a bitter pill to swallow for those who truly want children but unless the couple in question is in the upper 10 percentile they will be poorer. That in turn means that one or the other or both parents will be compelled to work more hours than they would have had to work in the late ’70’s just to maintain the same income level.
Now is the time for the stigma against those making the childfree choice to be eradicated but first “awareness” and acceptance must take place. And IMO most couples do not have a clear grasp of the financial realities of choosing to have children. There will not be more “family time” until wages increase and hours of work decrease.
“Awareness” aside: BTW if anyone would like to call attention to the posts I wrote at the links above by “stumbling them” or whatever I would be most appreciative. I’ve just gone through a 2 month period of writing good stories that didn’t get many hits. In contrast to those posts a “quickie” post I filled with quotes soared and for a couple of days made it to 85/100 on the Wordpress “Top Posts” list. You can imagine my chagrin as I watched an unworthy post top out because it was “trendy” and the other good ones get ignored because people didn’t want to hear about “family” realities. What a downer.
I’ve often found myself wondering why couples have children, when they won’t be able to spend much time with them due to both parent having to work long hours, just to be able to afford them. In fact, a friend’s marriage fell apart due in part to this problem. They got married, bought the house, had the first kid, decided to renovate the house, then had another child in quick succession. Having to pay for 2 kids plus renovations meant dad had to work longer hours (though in all fairness, the mother worked as well). However, a big complaint of hers was that he didn’t spend enough time with their two kids. Unsurprisingly, they’re now separated. And the father is always the first to bingo my significant other and I about kids and marriage whenever he sees us. Misery loves company??
I think Timethief is 100% on the mark when she says that couples do not have a clear grasp on the financial realities of having children. If they did, perhaps they wouldn’t have so many, or so quickly?
mercurior – interesting points. Clearly relationships should be partnerships and couples look for what works for them. When children are not in the equation I think this is easy. As soon as children come in, the demands they bring throw he balance off. I think your first and second paragraph are fair points!
Jan – Yes, it is a Catch 22. And even though there is the option to take shorter hours, men won’t take them unless they are prepared to sacrifice their careers.
TT- Spot on. Interestingly this never comes up in the mantra to “have kids and have more kids.” And it should. It’s another example of how both sides of the story are never presented… the ads for the supposed perfect family (with 2-4 kids) always show a well off picture perfect scene, when the reality is that unless you are rich, it will be a struggle to maintain an average standard of living. And it will require two substantial incomes, not one (or one and a half). For the reasons you mention more “family time” is a distant dream,(unless you’re childfree of course) but most refuse to believe it.
Carisa – Indeed misery loves company! You would think that he’d be advising you against kids after his own example. Or admiring your decision to be childfree. Now she’s single parent with two kids she can probably forget about “family time”, while he will probably have to figure out how to work even harder to pay the child support he’ll be on the hook for. I also agree with TT – if people considered the financial realities of having children (not just babies) they might just rethink. Instead of which, most people put more financial thought into buying a car or house than they do having kids.
Nice post with wonderful and informed comments. One only has to say this, spend maximun time with childern and help them grow into nicee human beings.
Dio – thanks for the compliment
. I wasn’t entirely sure of the point you’re making in your comment with relation to the post however…. care to clarify for us?